g of objects,
he takes care that the principle of individuation has preceded it;--that
is, that the various ideas or objects to be grouped, be individually
familiar to the pupil. In communicating a story, therefore, or an
anecdote, or in teaching a child to read, care must be taken that the
objects or individual truths, the words, or the letters, be previously
taught by themselves, before he be called upon to group them in masses,
whether greater or smaller. If this be neglected, an important law of
Nature is violated, and the lesson to this extent will be ineffective,
or worse. But if, on the contrary, this rule be attended to, the pupil,
when he comes to these objects in the act of grouping, is prepared for
the process; he meets with nothing that he is not familiar with; he has
nothing to learn, and has only to allow the objects to take their proper
places, as when he looked into the room, and grouped its contents as
before supposed. All this being perfectly natural, is accomplished
without effort, and with ease and pleasure.--This precaution on the part
of the teacher, will at once remove many of the difficulties and
embarrassments which have hitherto pressed so heavily upon the pupil in
almost every stage of his advance, but more especially in the early
stages of his learning to read.[17]

As an illustration of our meaning, we may notice here, that a child who
knows what is meant by "sheep," and "the keeping of sheep," of "tilling
the ground," and "making an offering to God," &c. is prepared to hear or
to read an abridgement of the story of Cain and Abel. We say _an
abridgement_ or _first step_, for reasons which shall afterwards be
explained. Without a previous knowledge of these several elements of
which this story is compounded, he could neither have listened to it
with pleasure, nor read it with any degree of profit; but as soon as
these are individually familiar, the grouping,--the knowledge of the
whole story,--is a matter of ease, and generally of delight. As the
story advances, it causes a constant and regular series of groupings on
the mind by the imagination, which are at once exquisitely pleasing and
permanent. The child, as in a living and moving picture, imagines a man
laboriously digging the ground, and another man in a distant field
placidly engaged in attending to the wants and the safety of a flock of
sheep. He imagines the former heaping an altar with fruits and without
fire; and the latter killing